An employee reports that a Windows laptop with a conventional spinning hard drive takes a long time to open programs and switch between them. Task Manager shows normal CPU usage and plenty of available memory. Which action would most directly improve the laptop's responsiveness?
Run the disk defragmentation (Optimize Drives) utility.
Because the laptop uses a mechanical HDD, file fragmentation can slow down application launches and task-switching. Running the disk defragmentation (Optimize Drives) utility rewrites scattered file fragments into contiguous blocks, reducing head movement and speeding up reads. Adding RAM provides little benefit when memory pressure is low, replacing the battery only affects power, and updating the BIOS rarely influences day-to-day program performance.
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Why wouldn't installing additional RAM fix the slow responsiveness?
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